'Reconstructing the Cold War'

Why would the Soviet government consider the Marshall Plan more threatening than the Truman Doctrine? How could Yugoslavia move from a stalwart of socialism in Europe to a renegade pariah, expelled from the Soviet sphere of influence just after states in Western Europe signed the Brussels defence pact? Why would it be welcomed back into the socialist family, with profuse acknowledgements of previous mistakes, when its defense contribution was much less needed? Why would the USSR allow its most important alliance with China to falter? And why, finally, would Stalin completely neglect the de-colonising world as a potential ally in the global power competition? Why did it need de-Stalinsation to start an offensive global power strategy in the ‘Third World’?

In his book review of Ted Hopf’s Reconstructing the Cold War, Stefano Guzzini discusses Hopf’s answers to these puzzles.

Hopf suggests that instead of realist theories of international relations or personality-centred diplomatic history, a constructivist take provides a more promising path. Developing his earlier approach on ‘societal constructivism’, Hopf argues that Soviet identity discourses at home explain its relations abroad. For each of these puzzles, he can show that Soviet external relations were driven by a particular way the Soviet Union came to understand itself. When an identity ‘discourse of difference’ got empowered, the relations to Yugoslavia, the Eastern Bloc, China and the Third World were redefined.

Covering 1945-1958, it is the first of a planned trilogy which will cover Soviet foreign policy until the end of the Cold War.